Berlin Diary (84 page)

B
ERLIN
,
August
31

Laid up with the flu for a bit. When the maid came in last night just before the bombing started, I asked: “Will the British come over tonight?”

“For certain,” she sighed resignedly. All her confidence, all the confidence that five million Berliners had that the capital was safe from air attack, is gone.

“Why do they do it?” she asked.

“Because you bomb London,” I said.

“Yes, but we hit military objectives, while the British, they bomb our homes.” She was a good advertisement for the effectiveness of Goebbels’s propaganda.

“Maybe you bomb their homes too,” I said.

“Our papers say not,” she argued. She said the German people wanted peace. “Why didn’t the British accept the Führer’s offer?” she wanted to know. This woman comes from a worker’s family. Her husband is a worker, probably an ex-Communist or Socialist. And yet she has fallen a complete victim to the official propaganda.

The British gave us a good strafing last night and even German officials admitted that the damage was greater than ever before. A German friend dropped in to tell me the great Siemens works had been hit. The
Börsen Zeitung
headlines tonight:
“BRITISH AIR PIRATES OVER BERLIN
.”

I’ve turned down the Propaganda Ministry’s offer to take me along with other correspondents on a conducted
tour each morning after a raid to see the damage. I know the German military authorities have no intention of showing us any military objectives that may be hit. To make an honest check-up would take several hours of motoring over the vast area of Berlin
.

B
ERLIN
,
September
1

I was in my bath at midnight last night and did not hear the sirens sound the alarm. First I knew of the raid was when the guns started to thunder. I dozed off to sleep, still having the flu with me, but was awakened during the night by the thud and shock of two bomb explosions very near the hotel.

Today the High Command announces officially that the British fliers last night were “hindered” from dropping their bombs by the splendid work of the capital’s anti-aircraft guns, and that the only bombs dropped therefore fell outside the city limits.

This is strange because the Tiergarten was roped off today and this evening the press admits that several “bomb craters” were discovered in the park after last night’s raid. I staggered off to the
Rundfunk
tonight to do an anniversary broadcast. The military censor, a very decent chap, was puzzled about the conflicting German reports of the bombing.

“My instructions are you can’t contradict the communiqués of the High Command,” he said.

“But the German press contradicts them,” I argued. “I heard the bombs fall in the Tiergarten, and the Berlin papers admit that some did.”

He was a good sport and let me read the contradictory reports.

The main effect of a week of constant British night bombings has been to spread great disillusionment
among the people here and sow doubt in their minds. One said to me today: “I’ll never believe another thing they say. If they’ve lied about the raids in the rest of Germany as they have about the ones on Berlin, then it must have been pretty bad there.”

Actually, the British bombings have not been very deadly. The British are using too few planes—fifteen or twenty a night—and they have to come too far to carry really effective, heavy loads of bombs. Main effect is a moral one, and if the British are smart they’ll keep them up every night. Tonight another attack began just before I broadcast, but it was not much of a show.

A year ago today the great “counter-attack” against Poland began. In this year German arms have achieved victories never equalled even in the brilliant military history of this aggressive, militaristic nation. And yet the war is not yet over, or won. And it was on this aspect that people’s minds were concentrated today, if I am any judge. They long for peace. And they want it before the winter comes.

B
ERLIN
,
September
2

I learned today that the Germans you see removing time bombs are for the most part prisoners from concentration camps. If they live through the experience, they are promised release. As a matter of fact it probably is an easy choice for them. Even death is a welcome release from the tortures of the Gestapo. And there’s always the chance that the bomb won’t go off Some of the bombs that fell in the Tiergarten, it’s now revealed, were time bombs.

For some time now our censors have not allowed us
to use the word “Nazi” on the air. They say it has a bad sound in America. One must say “National Socialist” or avoid the term altogether, as I do. The word “invasion” in reference to what happened in Scandinavia and the west, and what is planned for England
, is also taboo.

Studying the German figures on air losses over Britain, which are manifestly untrue, I find that nearly every day they run 4 to 1 in favour of the Luftwaffe. This ratio must have a magic attraction to someone in the Air Ministry.

B
ERLIN
,
September
4–5 (3 a.m.)

Hitler made a surprise speech here this afternoon, the occasion being the opening of the
Winterhilfe
—winter relief—campaign. Like the
Volkswagen
, the cheap “people’s car” on which German workers are paying millions of marks a month in instalments though the factory which is supposed to make them is actually manufacturing only arms, the
Winterhilfe
is one of the scandals of the Nazi regime, though not one German in a million realizes it. It is obvious that in a country without unemployment not much “winter relief” is necessary. Yet the Nazis go on wringing several hundred million marks each winter out of the people for “winter charity” and actually use most of the money for armaments or party funds.

Hitler’s appearance today was kept a secret until the last minute, the Propaganda Ministry rushing off the correspondents from the afternoon press conference to the Sportpalast. What is Himmler afraid of, since British bombers cannot come over during daylight? Is he afraid of an “incident”?

The session was another beautiful example of how
Hitler takes advantage of the gullibility of his people. He told them, for instance, that while the German air force attacked Britain by day, the cowardly RAF comes over only at night. He did not explain
why
this is so—that the Germans can get over England by day because it is only twenty-five miles from German bases and they can thus protect their bombers with fighters, whereas Germany is too far from Britain to enable the British to protect their bombers with fighters.

Hitler said with lovely hypocrisy: “I waited three months without answering the British night bombings in the hope they would stop this mischief. But Herr Churchill saw in this a sign of weakness. You will understand that we are now answering, night for night. And when the British air force drops two or three or four thousand kilograms of bombs, then we will in one night drop 150- 230- 300- or 400,000 kilograms.”

At this point he had to stop because of the hysterical applause of the audience, which consisted mostly of German women nurses and social workers.

“When they declare,” continued Hitler, “that they will increase their attacks on our cities, then we will raze
their
cities to the ground.” Here the young nurses and social workers were quite beside themselves and applauded phrenetically. When they had recovered, he said:

“We will stop the handiwork of these air pirates, so help us God.” At this the young German women hopped to their feet and, their breasts heaving, screamed their approval.

“The hour will come,” Hitler went on, “when one of us will break, and it will not be National Socialist Germany.” At this juncture the raving maidens kept their heads sufficiently to break their wild shouts of joy with a chorus of: “Never! Never!”

Though grim and dripping with hate most of the evening, Hitler had his humorous, jaunty moments. His listeners found it very funny when he said: “In England
they’re filled with curiosity and keep asking: ‘Why doesn’t he come?’ Be calm. Becalm. He’s coming! He’s coming!” And the man squeezed every ounce of humour and sarcasm out of his voice. The speech was not broadcast direct, but recorded and rebroadcast two hours after he had finished.

L
ATER.—
The British came over again tonight, arriving punctually at fifteen minutes before midnight, which is their usual time. The fact that the searchlights rarely pick up a plane has given rise to whispers among the people of Berlin
that the British planes are coated with an invisible paint. Tonight the bombers cruised over the city at intervals for two hours. The
flak
guns thundered away like mad, but without effect. Another bomb dropped in the Tiergarten and killed a policeman.

B
ERLIN
,
September
5

Very annoyed still that the German radio officials refuse to let me view the nightly air-raids. They come each night when I am at the
Rundfunk
. Nor can we mention them if they occur during our talk. Tonight when I arrived for my broadcast I found that the RRG had installed a lip microphone for us to speak in. In order to make your voice heard you have to hold your lips to it. But the sounds of the anti-aircraft guns firing outside do not register. That is why they installed it. But they have put it in the same building, so that we no longer have to race through a hail of falling shrapnel to get to a microphone.

The United States is to turn over fifty destroyers to the British in return for naval and air bases in British possessions off our eastern coast. The Germans say it is a breach of neutrality, as it is, but they’re not going to do anything about it, not even protest. They’re hoping that our isolationists and our Lindberghs will keep us out of the war and they intend to refrain from doing anything to jeopardize their position.